Uijae J. & Alexi R.
‘Topophobia – Fear of entering a biophysical place.’
Everything is eventually re-claimed and occupied by nature.
The project is a visualization of the sense of fear that the living world contains within. Drawing inspiration from the definition of the word the video work explores boundaries of attraction and uncanny. Duvet is a starting point, an attractive object with a clear purpose for many people.
Initially, we infected a stuffed animal and a duvet with something unapologetically natural and scary for many: mold. Alongside that, we left agar specimens with different bacteria in it. We took our tears, saliva, hair and left them in plastic boxes. We have buried the divet and the toy outside under the school garden ground. Due to weather conditions and pure chance mold did not develop for about a month. But instead the duvet became a home for freezing insects, arachnids and molluscs during the end months of wet Dutch winter.
After being left without any human supervision it transformed into an environment of itself, where no system except for the vital system of the earth has a say in its state.
This project is an open invitation for viewers to tune-in with this strange world and decide for themselves whether they want to explore it further.